Sylvi had slowly put her hand to the place Hirishy’s nose had touched. That had been almost as strange as what had gone before: you didn’t touch the pegasi, and they didn’t touch you. She thought it was probably a good rule; if it weren’t positively forbidden, the urge to stroke the shining glossy pegasi would probably be overwhelming. She was sure that a pegasus flank would make the sleekest silkhound feel as rough as straw; but the pegasi were a people, like humans, and must be treated with respect. (And you mustn’t ever, ever ride a pegasus, which was the first thing that every human child, royal or not, on meeting or even seeing its first pegasus, wanted to do.) Sylvi had been very young when she had realised you had to be more careful of the pegasi because the humans were dominant: because the pegasi came to the human king’s court, and the pegasus king stood behind the human king’s shoulder. But Hirishy had touched her.
She had in fact three times touched Hirishy. She didn’t remember the first time: her mother had told her about it. She had grabbed a handful of Hirishy’s forelock when Hirishy had bent a little too low over the baby lying on the queen’s bed, and rubbed her face against Hirishy’s velvet nose.“You were too little to understand about kissing, but kissing is still clearly what you were doing!” The queen, both laughing and horrified, rescued Hirishy—but not before Hirishy had kissed the princess back.
And it had been Hirishy who’d come to stand beside her the day that Sylvi had slipped and fallen on the Little Court steps when she was supposed to be processing with the rest of her family. It had been one of the first occasions when Sylvi had been deemed old enough—and in her case, more crucially, big enough—and sensible enough to be in the royal procession. And then she had managed to trip—by catching her foot on a bulge of hastily taken-up hem—and fall. She landed hard and painfully, but was up again so quickly that her mother only glanced at her and the ceremony wasn’t quite spoilt—Sylvi hoped. She knew she was walking stiffly, because what she wanted to do was limp, but she told herself it wouldn’t show under the heavy robe she was wearing. If it had been less heavy, there wouldn’t have been a bulge to catch her foot.
But when they’d come to the end of the court and turned to stand in the great arched doorway, while the magicians chanted and waved their incense around and the royal family wasn’t the centre of attention for a moment, Hirishy had slipped from behind the queen and stood beside Sylvi, and, after a moment, as if accidentally, as if she were merely shifting her position, put her nose in Sylvi’s hand. And Sylvi had relaxed, as if her mother had put her arm around her, and as soon as she relaxed, the hurt began to ebb, so that when the ceremony had been over with and her mother had put her arm around her and asked her if she was all right, Sylvi said truthfully, “Yes, I’m fine now.”
But Hirishy was different from the other pegasi—and not different in a way that was well-matched to a professional soldier. As Eliona, daughter of Baron Soral of Powring in Orthumber and colonel of the Lightbearers, she hadn’t had her own Speaker, and neither Hirishy nor the pegasus bound to her second-in-command had ever gone out with her company as they patrolled borders, escorted ambassadors through the wild lands, chased rumours of ladons and dispatched taralians and norindours. But she’d had a Speaker assigned the moment the news of her engagement to Corone was announced—and two years later, shortly after Danacor was born, and on very dubious precedent, her Speaker was changed.
Sylvi’s translation of the adult conversations she’d overheard about this was that her mother’s first Speaker, having discovered that his enviable achievement was in fact career ruin, was daring enough to believe he might yet succeed elsewhere if he were given the chance. He was transferred out, on the grounds that pregnancy had altered the queen’s aura in a way that another Speaker might better take advantage of, and Minial came instead. And while Hirishy was apparently even more untranslatable than most pegasi, Minial treated her with absolute respect—and patience. Sylvi liked her for that. Minial was one of the rare female magicians, but she was tall and imposing, and looked good in processions. She was also easy to have around, without that pressingness, Sylvi had once called it, that most magicians had, that feeling that there was no space for you when a magician was in the room.
Hirishy came wafting in after Sylvi’s mother, her mane and tail already plaited, flowers woven snugly up among her primaries, and a wide blue ribbon around her creamy shoulders with wreaths of blue and yellow embroidery on it, and a little embroidered bag dangling from it like a pendant jewel. There was a word for the embroidered neck-bands the pegasi made, but Sylvi couldn’t think of it. Hirishy went and stood at the window, looking out toward the long curly trails and clusters of people moving toward the Outer Great Court for the ceremony. Sylvi was trying to ignore them. Sylvi looked at Hirishy’s wings and thought the flowers must itch, like a scratchy collar. Like the scratchy collar she was wearing, heavy with gold thread and heavier yet with gems. They were only lapis lazuli and storm agate, but they weighed just as much as sapphires and rubies. She sighed.
There wasn’t any chance of rain. The sky was blue and clear, and the housefolk would be laying out the banquet without one hesitating glance overhead. She saw Hirishy look at the sky, and grinned to herself. There are fewer shadowy corners to hide in on a bright day.
Her mother was twisting a fine enamelled chain through Sylvi’s hair, plaiting as she went, and muttering to herself. The chain hung in a loop round Sylvi’s temples and over her forehead, and then the tail wound through her plait and ended with a teardrop of aquamarine. Only the reigning sovereign ever wore a crown, and Sylvi’s father very rarely did so, but chains and flowers were common. The queen was wearing a garnet chain for her daughter’s binding, with diamonds at her temples.“You don’t have to do that,” said Sylvi, trying not to laugh; what her mother was muttering as she plaited was more suited to the practise yard than her daughter’s bedroom just before her binding. “One of them could.”
“Them” were the half-dozen beautifully-dressed ladies waiting in the corridor to escort the queen and her daughter to the Outer Great Court, only one of whom was also a soldier.
“Well, you won’t believe me,” said the queen, “but I would like to. You’re the only daughter I’m going to dress for her binding; your father has had three sons to dress for theirs. And if I can plait my own hair—if I can plait a mane, for the gods’ sake, I ought to be able to plait your hair.”